Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

That depends... I still see some bias from some areas when it comes to developers over 40... And not all of it is unfounded. A lot of developers my age don't look and won't take the time to learn new tooling. Many have lives and either won't take or aren't given the time at work to keep up. Software development evolves at a very rapid pace.

The trackpad on a macbook is unmatched in any other laptop I've ever used... (all laptop keyboards are pretty shitty), and the screen is nice, but not as unique. I also like the aluminum shell... that said, I'd considered some of the ultrabooks (acer and asus) this last time around... kept me with the touchpad... I care more for what I touch and see than for the guts even. though I did pay too much for 512gb ssd and 16gb ram.

I'll admit, the main reasons I have a macbook pro laptop are 1) the touchpad, 2) the display and 3) the styling... Functionally, I could have similar hardware for about $1k less for what I last bought (top end rmbp august 2014)... My last one was stolen, or I'd still be using it (2011 mbp). My home desktop is windows, my htpc is ubuntu, and most of my dev is in a gui editor (sublime) via a smb connection to an ubuntu VM, with a couple SSH terminals in a shell prompt on that VM in either windows, or linux. I edit with gui, and run against Ubuntu... most of the apps I use run wherever, and don't care that much... I also use a Model-M style keyboard at work and home. As for meta in meta... a lot of my target for software is now in docker containers, inside said VM.

Didn't AMD management shift off it's manufacturing side, and shake down on its' engineering teams in order to maximize short-term profits? I mean, I will often choose AMD where it's pragmatic, but they're too far behind Intel for server performance/watt considerations.

If you go with a Nexus phone or tablet, updates have been rolling pretty steadily. The same goes for the Moto * line of phones... Far better than any carrier at this point. From the start I've stuck with hackable devices that has been well supported by third party firmware... the issues always comes down to closed source drivers.

The issue is that the platform doesn't have a common boot, and initialization system... also, said devices are often packaged with only the drivers for that device, specifically compiled for that version of the OS... now that things are maturing, Google should come out with some common driver interfaces so binary drivers can work across platform versions. This would make sense as Google is breaking portions of the OS into upgradable units.

What concerns me, is how much this may be used as a strawman for more agency powers (MI6 is already asking for more). Seriously, there is nothing that can be done to stop a little bit of crazy, no matter how much data you collect, or who you spy on...

* Use generic HDD controllers that are supported in the box. (Using a 3rd party controller and driver, only to discover that when it reports an error, it becomes unavailable altogether, reboot to start again)

* Understand the features you are using. When I started, I configured a ZFS array with two hot spares, when a couple drives failed, the hot spares didn't activate, and I was stuck...

* Practice a version migration early on.

* Use a motherboard with ECC Ram if you're using ZFS, I can't understate this enough. AMD CPU + ASUS Motherboard seems to be your best bet here for Unregistered ECC memory in terms of bang for the buck.

* Use as much memory as possible... if you can use 32GB of ram, do so.

In general, it was fun while it lasted, right now, I put 4x 4TB drives in my old Synology 409 box, and it's running okay... I'm going to get one of the 12-drive synology boxes in a few months and test my old drives, putting them all in that moving forward. I really don't have the time and patience for dealing with a homebrew NAS.

I don't mean for this to discourage anyone, only pointing out that it's sometimes far easier to buy an appliance that DIY.